


Birds of Passage

by Tamburlaine_the_great



Series: Wear Your Tribulation Like A Rose [1]
Category: The Marlows - Antonia Forest
Genre: Airports, Chance Meetings, Friendship, Gen, Mention of racist attitides, Post-Canon, mention of sudden character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:01:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24489394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tamburlaine_the_great/pseuds/Tamburlaine_the_great
Summary: Reagents: Patrick Merrick and Nicola Marlow.Catalyst: Heathrow Terminal 3, Departures.Products: To be determined.
Relationships: Nicola Marlow & Patrick Merrick
Series: Wear Your Tribulation Like A Rose [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2101206
Comments: 13
Kudos: 27





	Birds of Passage

Having made it through check-in and passport control, far too early, he had a couple of hours to while away in Heathrow’s Terminal 3 before his flight boarded. He bought a black coffee, sat down at an empty table. There were plenty to choose from, this early in the morning. He lit a cigarette, took a sip of the so-called coffee, grimaced, and stirred sugar into it. It was only slightly more palatable that way. He studied the guide again, though he knew its contents more or less by heart now, and his experiences of living overseas were that it was always never quite what other people had led one to expect. He bent to his bag, searching for the copy of ibn Daher that he’d been given, and when he looked up with it in his hand, there, in front of him, was almost the last person he’d expected to see.

“I nearly thought I’d made a frightful bish,” she said. She’d never thought she’d recognise someone from the way his hair grew, but as soon as he sat up, it was clear that she’d been right: the yellow eyes under those dark brows could only be Patrick Merrick’s.

“ _Nick_?” Without conscious thought Patrick had risen to his feet and was about to offer her a hug before recollecting himself. “Join me, please,” he added, gesturing to the other chair, “that is, unless you’re rushing to another gate.”

She hesitated, then pulled out the other chair and sat down, placing her tray on the table and unloading, with a sigh of relief, the bulging satchel weighing down her right shoulder. “No, my flight doesn’t even board for another hour. You?” He was not dressed like a student, or even a don: he had on a sand-coloured linen suit which looked as if it had been made for him, and a proper shirt and tie, though the shirt collar was unbuttoned and the tie loosened.

“Much the same. Where are you off to? I thought you were still at Cambridge, looking down microscopes.”

“I am. At least, supposed to be. Right now everything just couldn’t be more mouldy and I was a great fool to think that a doctorate was a good idea. So my supervisor, the lamb, managed to wangle me this conference in New Orleans, so that’s where I’m headed.” She took hungry bites out of the unappetising looking sandwich and poured tea for herself.

“That sounds interesting. All that jazz and suchlike.”

She paused, mid chew, finished her bite, and said, “Do you know, I didn’t even think of that.” It was a cheerful thought. “Where’s your destination? Mum said you’re in the Foreign Office now – which I thought a tad unlikely, you being not exactly renowned for your social skills.”

“That _is_ the bit I hate most,” he admitted, “but thankfully most people I see have a reason for meeting me, so it makes conversation a little easier. I’ve been posted to Abu Dhabi.”

“Nevvererdovit.”

“It’s one of the Emirates, squashed between Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf – not that I should be calling it that. Iran’s not greatly popular there.”

She nodded, sapiently. “Why there, if one may ask?”

He grinned, and that was a very familiar expression. “Fluent Arabic and a fairly comprehensive knowledge of falconry, as far as I can tell.”

“Of course, I vaguely remember reading something about it being very popular in the Middle East. Maybe it was last year, because of the Iraq war?” she added, uncertainly. “Were you out there at all during the war?”

“No, though I was in Kuwait in ‘89. As a very junior functionary. I’ve been in Muscat for the past two years, and enjoyed that. Oman’s beautiful. So thankfully I didn’t have to experience a war zone.” That probably explained the noticeable tan and occasional rhoticism in his speech.

“Good. The pictures on the news were bad enough: all that environmental destruction: the oil fires just looked awful.”

Patrick nodded, saw that she’d finished her sandwich, and offered her a cigarette.

“Thanks.” He lit hers and his own. “Mm. I’ve been trying to give up, but…” She gestured, somehow conveying the futility of the attempt. “It helps with the thinking process, I find. Or at least, gives one an excuse to not stare down a microscope for a few minutes.”

“What is your research about?”

“Metal matrix composites,” she said, wondering how long he was going to pretend interest.

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “What on earth are they?”

“Metal composites, reinforced with other things like polymers or ceramics in the crystal matrix itself, rather than – well, rather than like reinforced concrete. It’s a micro- rather than macro-scale reinforcement, if you see what I mean.”

“Right. Gosh. That sounds – complex.”

She grinned. “I don’t suppose you know much about metallurgy.”

He shook his head, ruefully. “Not a thing, I’m afraid. Science was never my strong point. But do tell me more, if it won’t bore you explaining things to a layman.”

She grimaced. “What I’m doing is mostly with aluminium-graphite composites for electronics, and just at the moment I really wish I’d taken the First and gone and done something completely different, like be a librarian, or seriously trained for the Olympics archery team.”

“Why didn’t you?” he asked, tentatively, but interested.

She exhaled a long stream of smoke. “Because I was on the high of graduation, probably, and because I was offered a studentship. And at the time I honestly thought it was the right thing to do.”

He studied her. She was almost as thin as when he’d last seen her, which, given that she’d been sixteen or so at the time, gave her a taut, braced kind of look. She was dressed in jeans and a Teenage Fanclub T-shirt, with a tweed blazer over the top, and her boots were green Docs. Her very fair hair was scraped back off her face and tied up messily with a shoelace and she was not wearing make-up. He’d have been surprised if she had. It was odd to see how she was recognizably Nicola, but very definitely older, and not merely because her tanned skin was crinkled around the eyes, and she smoked as though it was habitual.

“It probably still is,” he said, at length, “but there’s an inevitable point in everyone’s research, I think, when everything just seems pointless, judging by what various fellow students said.” He stubbed out the cigarette in the glass ashtray. “Questioning the importance or utility of what one’s doing is always a good thing, I think.”

“That sounds rather personal.”

“Mm, yes, I was thinking of the year I spent after A Levels with a bunch of Christian brothers.”

“Oh? Pray, tell.”

He caught her expression and grinned in response. “Alright, if you don’t mind a bit of a long story.”

She glanced pointedly at her watch. “As long as it takes less than forty minutes, I’ve got nowhere else to be.”

He bowed his head at her. “Madam is all condescension. So there I was with me Levels, and sulkily trying to resist university. So I took the posh boy’s way out, and announced I would have a gap year. I can’t remember now who suggested the Stylites to me, but they had a few schools around North Africa, and I thought it would be a good idea to help out, do one’s charitable bit, and so on.” Nicola saw an expression of derision for his past self settle on his face. “So, I landed in Benghazi with a group of similarly high-minded young people, and we did our thing at a school there run by these Stylites. You have to bear in mind that Libya is a Muslim country, and Christian proselytizing is strictly forbidden. But this is just a school.” He finished the last of his, now-cold coffee, and grimaced again involuntarily. “It was a very close-knit community, and it took me a while to notice that everyone was European. If they weren’t speaking English it was because they spoke Italian, or Maltese. Hardly anyone bothered learning even basic Arabic. And when I noticed, I realised I’d hardly learned anything, either. So I made an effort. And it was then I noticed the _other_ kids, not in school, who were sweeping floors and running errands and looking after the goats which provided milk for everyone’s fucking coffee – sorry, that just slipped out. I forgot how bloody angry it made me – and they weren’t getting any education. So I asked, why don’t we give them classes as well? as long as we aren’t teaching them about Catholicism, the authorities aren’t going to take an adverse interest, surely?”

“Did they?”

“Absolutely refused. Said it wasn’t part of their Christian duty to educate heathens when they weren’t allowed to preach the Good News and save them from their damnation.”

“Gosh. That all sounds rather – colonial,” Nicola said, disapprovingly.

“Quite. All the kids who could really have been helped by the school weren’t in the slightest. And no-one showed any interest in doing so. I might not have felt so strongly about it except there were two children there, a brother and sister, who were orphans, and who did odd-jobs for the brothers, and once we’d got over the language barrier, they were clever, intelligent kids, observant and with amazing recall, and they were just being wasted because of poverty and disinterest. They taught me street Arabic and some Tamasheq – it’s a Berber language,” he added, seeing her quizzical look, “and how to properly bargain for stuff. In return I taught them English, and to read and write in it. So that felt like properly fulfilling my role: actually teaching kids who needed it.”

“And it didn’t matter to you that they were Muslims?” she asked, provokingly.

“Maybe it _would_ have mattered more a few years earlier,” he admitted. “Religion seemed so very important back then. But in the face of deprivation and want it seemed so trivial.”

“So you had your revelation, and went home and decided not to waste your life.” Nicola’s tone was rather sharp. “There were too many people at Cambridge talking about ‘what they’d learned from building schools in Burundi’ or wherever. When probably all they’d learned was that they couldn’t lay a brick for toffee.”

He grimaced. “I’d like to think I did a little better than that, if only by helping two kids in a way that was actually useful. Maryam and Ghazi got into a proper school just before I left, and we write to each other. Maryam wants to be a doctor, and Ghazi an engineer, and I’m sure they’ll both go far.”

Nicola smiled, wryly. “I can’t imagine a friendship with two Libyan kids helped your Foreign Office prospects given Lockerbie and all.”

“Huh, you’d be surprised what they look for, or tolerate.”

“Yes? Probably I would. Do you find yourself drawn to Islam as a result? Or are you still staunchly Catholic?”

He considered this. “I like the principles of Islam. Not so much how it’s often interpreted, of course, but I think that’s the case with all religion: I’m finding I’m lapsing from the devotion of my teenage years, which I regret. But honestly, _does_ it really matter how one says the Mass if one follows Christ’s teachings?” He said this earnestly, as if he really wanted to know what she thought.

“I haven’t been to church in years,” she said, “so I can’t really comment on that. But it’s quite shocking coming from you, who thought saying the Mass as a ‘dim Protestant service’ was worthy of excommunication.”

He grimaced. “God, I can’t believe what a bloody prig I was then. Convinced I knew everything, so revoltingly smug. Ugh.”

Nicola could not help laughing at that. “I thought it was all rather exciting – almost exotic – when I was fourteen: you _minded_ so much: it had to be important: and because it was so different to how the Church of England was like. I sang in my college chapel choir as an undergraduate, so services were just a frame for the music, for me, and probably for about half my colleagues. Some people did believe – properly – though.”

“That must have been quite an experience.”

“I actually wanted Jesus, but I’m glad I ended up at Fitz – Jesus don’t let women sing in the chapel choir.”

“You didn’t want a women’s college?”

“I’d spent too long at an all girls’ school to want another three years of it, thank-you,” she said wryly. “Were you at one of those weird Catholic private halls?”

“PPHs. No, though I planned to before realising that I couldn’t have studied Arabic at any of them. I was at Wadham.”

He fiddled with the cigarette packet, drawing her glance to his hands: noticed an ugly white scar along his forefinger which stood out against the brown skin. He noticed the direction of her gaze and clenched his fist momentarily, but in fact she had been admiring the clean shape and strength of his hands. “That was the last gos I had, Hera. Thought I was her meal, even more so than when Jael gouged you, that first time you met.”

“Gosh, that seems like centuries ago, doesn’t it. I assume you can’t keep hawks any more.”

“Unfortunately not.” There was a pause. “How’s the family?”

“Alright, I s’pose. You know about Giles?” He nodded, hastily. Her eldest brother had been badly injured in the Falklands, invalided out of the Navy, and had died suddenly in what Patrick had been assured was not suicide. “Dad’s now Commodore. Kay and Edwin moved to Streweminster a few years back and I haven’t seen them in ages – we tend only to meet for special occasions. Rowan’s still in charge of the farm, but planning to go travelling when Peter’s properly taken over. Ann’s a midwife with MSF and she’s in Somalia at the moment. Gin got married two years ago – her husband designs event courses and so they travel a lot. I think they’re in Australia currently. And Lawrie’s with the RSC and seems to have a new girlfriend every time I see her.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “How do your parents take that?”

“I don’t think she’s ever ‘come out’, as such, and I don’t think Mum and Dad want to know, actually. Not after the huha there was over Peter and Selby, though I think that was mostly over Peter leaving the Navy rather than him actually being gay. It helps that everyone likes Sel, and of course he’s serving, so only home on leave.” She regarded him dispassionately. He was considerably better looking, aged twenty-six, than the stringy eighteen year old he had been, grown into his height and face. He reminded her much more of his father than she’d ever previously noticed. “Your Dad’s still our MP, I gather.”

“Indeed. Safe seat. Happy on the back benches and poking into things from sub-committees. Also quite happy for me not to come home and till the ancestral acres.”

“Would you want to, now?”

He considered this seriously. “No. The job interests me. Mostly. And who knows how much estate will be left by the time Dad retires?” He shrugged. “One good thing of being posted overseas means Ma doesn’t try to find suitable girls for me to attach.”

“I thought it helped, having a diplomatic spouse.”

“It can, if said spouse actually enjoys it. But it’s rough on women in the Middle East, and I’m not likely to be posted elsewhere.”

“Does that bother you?” she asked, curiously.

“Which? The treatment of women or me not being married?”

“Either. Both.”

“Of course it bothers me,” he said, rather crossly. “It’s unfair and stupid, and I hate having to be tactful about it. But me not being married doesn’t bother me at all.” His hands, fiddling again with the cigarettes, stilled. He sighed, offered her the packet and then took another himself and lit them. “I really must cut down,” he said, ruefully. “But I hate flying. Are you – do you have a boyfriend? or, let us not assume, girlfriend?”

“No. Not right now, anyway.” She grinned at his carefully blank expression. “There’ve been a couple of boyfriends. None that were serious. Besides, I think I prefer friendship. Romantic relationships seem to be so much more tough. It seems so easy to hurt and be hurt in ways that are difficult for friends. One’s so much more vulnerable.”

He nodded. “I know what you mean. There was a girl at university. We – well, let’s say we regarded sex with rather different viewpoints: she thought it was just fun, whereas for me it meant rather more than that.”

“I’m sorry,” she said involuntarily. “I’ve not had that happen to me, but…” Surprising herself, she reached out and squeezed his free hand briefly.

He made a wry face. “Thanks.” Her hand was warm and oddly comforting for that long-ago disillusionment. He glanced at his watch, and felt disappointed. “Your flight will be boarding soon.”

She looked at her own watch. “Yes. I should find my gate.” She finished the cigarette and extinguished it deliberately. “This has been… slightly frustrating. Nice, but – I wish we’d had longer to talk.”

He nodded agreement. “I’ve missed you. It was my fault that we just –” he gestured expressively. “Would you like to – be friends again?”

Nicola considered. “Yes, I think I’d like that.” She gathered up her bag and hoisted it to her shoulder, rummaged in it for a notebook and pen, and scribbled her post and email addresses on a page, which she tore out and handed to him. In turn, he wrote, neatly, on a spare page, where she could contact him.

They both stood up.

“’Bye. Patrick. Safe journey.”

“You, too, and I hope you enjoy your conference.”

There was a brief, awkward moment, before Nicola hugged him, and, relieved, he returned the favour. She was slight and warm against him, her body sure and not tentative about the gesture at all. Her hair was soft against his cheek. He felt his heart clench.

“Mm,” she said, into his shirt. “You smell rather wonderful.” Then she looked up and rose to her tiptoes, and kissed him softly.

As if that had been the countersign to his password, both offering and acceptance, his hand cupped her head and he returned the kiss with a good deal of interest. Nicola had not expected quite such a degree of enthusiasm, but it was really very, very nice; in fact, bloody marvellous.

They pulled apart, both amazed. Looked at each other. Considered their surroundings: a middle-aged pin-striped gentleman was looking at them disapprovingly. “Damn,” he said, forcefully, but quietly. He stroked gentle fingers down her cheek. “That was – Nick, that was lovely.”

She nodded. “For me too. Hell, I really must dash.” Hastily she kissed his cheek, and felt his hand briefly clasp her shoulder, and then she was striding along the corridor to her departure gate, satchel bumping on her hip, a grin pulling unconsciously at her lips as she went.

Later, as Patrick sipped the red wine offered by the cabin steward, it seemed that he tasted that and the thought of Nicola.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve borrowed Nicola’s research interest from a friend’s PhD research at Cambridge from about the same time period, but placed her at a different college.
> 
> Set ten years after _Run Away Home_ , on that timeline.
> 
> The Stylites are not meant to be a representation of any existing or historical Christian order.


End file.
